Looking at current implementation of the pinterest site (it might change in the future), when you open the overlay a noscroll class is applied to the body element and overflow: hidden is set, thus body is no longer scrollable.

The overlay (created on-the-fly or already inside the page and made visible via display: block, it makes no difference) has position : fixed and overflow-y: scroll, with top, left, right and bottom properties set to 0: this style makes the overlay fill the whole viewport.

The div inside the overlay is instead just in position: static then the vertical scrollbar you see is related to that element. As a result the content is scrollable but overlay remains fixed.

When you close the zoom you hide the overlay (via display: none) and then you could also entirely remove it via javascript (or just the content inside, it's up to you how to inject it).

As a final step you have to also remove the noscroll class to the body (so the overflow property returns to its initial value)

var body = document.body,
overlay = document.querySelector('.overlay'),
overlayBtts = document.querySelectorAll('button[class$="overlay"]');
[].forEach.call(overlayBtts, function(btt) {
btt.addEventListener('click', function() {
/* Detect the button class name */
var overlayOpen = this.className === 'open-overlay';
/* Toggle the aria-hidden state on the overlay and the
no-scroll class on the body */
overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', !overlayOpen);
body.classList.toggle('noscroll', overlayOpen);
/* On some mobile browser when the overlay was previously
opened and scrolled, if you open it again it doesn't
reset its scrollTop property */
overlay.scrollTop = 0;
}, false);
});

Finally, here's another example in which the overlay opens with a fade-in effect by a CSS transition applied to the opacity property. Also a padding-right is applied to avoid a reflow on the underlying text when the scrollbar disappears.